


the words you want are out of reach (but they've never been so loud)

by expectopatronuz



Series: fangirl au [2]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Avengers Endgame Spoilers, Characters Writing Fanfiction, M/M, fangirl au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24053428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/expectopatronuz/pseuds/expectopatronuz
Summary: He’s in the good part of writing, the part where the words come before he has to think of them, like they’ve been there forever, just waiting for their moment.or, a Fangirl AU
Relationships: Luke Hemmings/Ashton Irwin, Michael Clifford/Calum Hood
Series: fangirl au [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1925728
Comments: 19
Kudos: 105





	the words you want are out of reach (but they've never been so loud)

**Author's Note:**

> title is from [beside you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ0z1LH6RJc) by marianas trench, because this is me we're talking about and this whole fic is based on [Fangirl](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16068905-fangirl) by Rainbow Rowell, which is my favourite YA book of all time and you should definitely read it if you have not already!
> 
> this was supposed to be a quick little break to my ongoing fic, then it ran away from me and now here it is. everyone is american, but that's not important. also there are _avengers endgame _spoilers, they also aren't important. you don't need to know anything about the MCU to get the story.__
> 
> _  
> _come talk to me on_[tumblr](https://calumsclifford.tumblr.com/)!_  
> 

There are already two guys in Luke’s room when he arrives.

He double checks his papers, but this is definitely where he’s supposed to be. He’s floundering at the door, looking between the papers resting on top of the box in his arms, the room number on the door, and the guys. One is doing something that looks like unpacking, shoving clothes into dresser drawers. The other is sprawled out on the opposite bed with headphones in.

The one unpacking looks up and his face breaks into a smile. “You must be Luke!”

“Uh, yeah. Michael?”

“No, that’s Michael, he’s just too lazy to unpack on his own.”

“Oh—” Luke looks over to his new roommate, expecting some sort of greeting, but Michael doesn’t look up.

“I’m Ashton,” the smiley one introduces. “You can put that box down, anywhere is fine.”

“Oh, uh—”

Ashton crosses the room in two steps and swats Michael’s shoulder. He pulls out a headphone, unimpressed.

“Move, your roommate is here.”

Michael finally looks up at Luke. “Hey,” he says, expressionless. He stands slowly, like each movement takes deliberate effort.

“Hey,” Luke mumbles back.

“I took that side of the room,” Michael points at the half-unpacked boxes. “I don’t care though, move my shit if you’re going to be weird about it.”

“Oh, uh – no, that’s alright.”

“Cool,” Michael says, disinterested.

Ashton looks over at Luke. “We’re going to grab burgers, have you ever been to Pear’s? Everyone goes to Pear’s their first night on campus. Do you want to come?”

Luke shakes his head. Michael shoves some boxes under his bed and rummages around looking for something on his desk.

“Ready, Ash?”

Ashton nods and they’re out the door before Luke has the chance to embarrass himself, thankfully.

Luke shuts the door behind them and crawls onto the bare mattress on his side of the room. He needs a minute, that’s all. His parents are coming up with Jack any minute, and he doesn’t want them to know that he’s on the verge of a meltdown. If he cries, his mom will cry, and then Jack will get annoyed, and Luke really needs Jack to not be annoyed with him at the moment.

The thing is, Jack’s already been a bit short-tempered with Luke, ever since Luke got his university housing forms and he had asked Jack why he couldn’t just stay at Jack’s apartment off campus.

“Because,” Jack had said, exasperated and tired, “I already have roommates.”

“I could share with you, we shared a room for like, sixteen years.”

“Fourteen,” Jack corrected, because he was still smug that he’d gotten Ben’s room when he moved out.

“Whatever, it worked out great!”

“Luke, I am not sharing a room with you. Besides, college is about meeting people, making friends.”

“But the whole point of having an older brother is not having to worry about weird strangers who steal your shampoo and smell like vinegar—”

“What are you even talking about?”

“People are weird, and gross.”

“Luke, how do you expect to make friends if you cling to me the whole year?”

“I don’t need friends, I have friends.”

“Real friends, Luke. Friends that can take you to parties or that you can go for coffee with. Not internet friends.”

Luke had said nothing to that, which only encouraged Jack.

“You’ll like living in the dorms, Luke. Everyone makes friends. I met my best friends in my first year in the dorms.”

“That’s different, you’re – you’re—”

“Friendly?”

“Yeah.”

“I promise, Luke. You’ll like it.”

“I don’t want to do this alone.”

“You’re not alone, I’m literally ten minutes off campus. We just don’t need to spend every fucking waking moment together, kid.”

Luke’s mom is already teary when she and his dad get up to his room with a couple of boxes.

“I remember when we moved Ben into one of these rooms—” she sets down her box and adjusts the sheets he’d finally pulled onto the bed. “It feels like just yesterday, and now—”

“Mom—”

“Give her some time, kid. We’re empty nesters, now. It’ll take some getting used to.”

“I’m not gone for good, I’ll be back for Thanksgiving in like, three months.”

Jack comes in with the last box, the one full of Luke’s books and huffs as he drops it onto the bed.

“Hey, nice view of campus,” he wanders over to the window. “My freshman year, my window faced a parking lot.”

Luke ignores him and goes back to unpacking.

His dad looks over the opposite side of the room. “Your roommate already has some things in here, have you met him?”

“Yeah.”

“Was he nice?” Luke’s mom asks, and he shrugs.

“He was fine.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll be best friends by winter break,” Jack pushes his shoulder affectionately and Luke glowers.

“Hey,” his mom starts, noticing the rising tension. “We’ve gotten most of the unpacking done, why don’t we go get some pizza?”

“Oh, I can’t,” Jack says. “I’m meeting up with Mali and Levi.”

Luke glares at him – _meeting up with_ is code for pregaming for a frat party with his roommates.

“Well, that’s alright. Maybe you could take Luke? I’m sure he’d like to meet your friends,” his mom, always the peacekeeper, tries desperately.

“No, I want pizza,” Luke says defiantly.

Luke’s mom sighs, but his dad smiles. “Then pizza it is.”

Luke’s parents drop him off at his dorm after dinner, but the don’t come up. They hug him goodbye for way too long, and even his dad gets a bit teary.

When he gets back to his room, his roommate – Michael – is still gone. His side of the room is untouched, so Luke assumes that he hasn’t been back.

Luke half-heartedly decorates his room – he pins a couple of photos to the bulletin board behind his desk. They’re both family photos; one of him and his brothers at his high school graduation, another of the five of them on the beach from their summer road trip to California.

Luke then spreads out his _Avengers_ posters, mostly official cinematic prints but a few were originals, drawn specifically for Luke. He decided back home that he’d only hang a few of them, containing himself to the bulletin board so that he wasn’t quite so blatantly a nerd.

He picks out three – his _First Avenger_ poster, with Captain America looking out of frame and the shield held prominently in the foreground, one of Bucky Barnes standing so that the star on his metal arm faces outward, and one of Steve reaching out as Bucky fades into dust.

He hides the rest of the posters in the back of his closet and sits in his bed with his back up against the wall. He logs into his Tumblr account, which is full of messages asking where the night’s chapter of _Stars and Souls_ is.

_Hey guys_ , he types out in a post. _I’m sorry, there won’t be a new chapter out tonight. Moved into my dorm, family stuff, you know how it is. I promise I’ll be back tomorrow, and I think you’ll like what I have planned…_

Luke scrolls a bit longer, reblogs some artwork he’s been tagged in and adds some gifs to his queue. He gets caught up reading another theory about the still unnamed part two of _Infinity War_ , and before he knows it, it’s past midnight and his roommate _still_ isn’t back.

Luke hopes that his roommate is the kind of guy that spends most of his nights with his boyfriend (or whoever Ashton was) and that he’ll mostly get the room to himself. He thinks it might not be so bad if he doesn’t actually have to sleep in the same room as the stranger.

Even though they don’t live on campus, Jack still meets with his roommate Mali every day for lunch in their old dorm hall. Jack takes pity on Luke and invites him to join them, so Luke get at least a bit of social interaction, and eats something of any substance. So far, he’s been too nervous to brave his dining hall, so he’s been mostly living off peanut butter with crackers and granola bars.

Luke waits for them outside the building, because he can’t stand the idea of walking into the dining hall alone. Mali greets him like they’re old friends, even though they’ve never met, and Luke follows them into the long lunch line, trailing behind like the child he still feels he is.

Once they’re sitting, eating boring, healthy salads with chicken, Mali turns the conversation to Luke.

“How have you enjoyed your first few days of class?”

Luke shrugs and chews through his chicken. It’s taking too long and he starts to get embarrassed when they wait for him. “It’s been fine.”

“First few days are always weird. My brother is a freshman too, he’s been calling me like three time a day asking where things are!”

“You should introduce him to Luke, he still has no friends,” Jack says.

“Hey—”

“Internet friends don’t count.”

“I can introduce you,” Mali says before Luke can argue, “He’s really shy, too. He’s lucky he’s on the soccer team, he’d never meet anyone otherwise.”

Luke immediately shuts the idea down in his head – in no world would a jock ever get along with him in any capacity. He nods along though, because Jack will definitely forget about this conversation in five minutes.

“Hey, tell us about your roommate,” Jack says, and Luke gives him a blank stare.

“There’s really nothing to tell.”

“Come on, you have to have had a conversation, at least.”

“No, I’ve seen him like twice. He just comes in, gets stuff, and leaves. He hasn’t even put sheets on his bed yet.”

“Hey, that’s kind of a good thing,” Mali says. “It’s almost like having a single!”

“No, it’s bad, you see,” Jack says. “Luke needs friends, he has crippling social anxiety and won’t speak to anyone he doesn’t live with.”

“Hey! That’s not – that’s not true.”

“It’s undiagnosed,” Jack jokes, and Luke considers storming away, but he really needs to finish this meal.

“Everyone gets a bit nervous around new people,” Mali says, and Luke likes her a lot. “You’ll be fine, roommates aren’t the be all end all of college social lives. I haven’t spoken to my freshman roommate since that year, I’m lucky Jack and Levi were down the hall.”

“She’s right, Luke. You’ve got to find people with common interests. Talk to the people in that creative writing class, all you ever do is write.”

“They’re all sophomores or juniors,” Luke says – he’d gotten special permission to take that class and he was the only freshman.

“We’re juniors,” Jack points out.

“That’s different.”

“Maybe you’ll find it easier, though.”

Luke sighs and shoves a big bite of chicken into his mouth so that he doesn’t have to talk anymore.

“Hey,” Mali says, clearly changing the subject. “We’re going to a party at the Triangle House. My brother might be there. You should come!”

“What’s a Triangle House?” he asks Jack.

“It’s an engineering fraternity. Want to come?”

“Uh, no, thank you. I don’t like drunk people.”

“But they’re nerds! Nerds are your people, you like nerds.”

“Not the kind of nerd who would join a fraternity,” Luke says. Mali gets up to fill her water bottle and Jack sighs.

“You can’t just sit up in your room for the rest of your life writing fanfiction, Luke. You have to try new things! How do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tried it?”

“Never tried what? A party? I’ve been to parties, you made me take you to parties all the time when I turned 16.”

“But you didn’t participate. You sat out in the car and read until I called you to come get me.”

“I didn’t know you knew that I did that.”

“Obviously I knew, Luke.” Jack shakes his head, like he can’t believe Luke is saying any of this, as if it’s so out of character. “I can get you some sugary coolers or something to ease you into it, just give it a try.”

“You’re not 21, yet,” Luke says and Jack dismisses him with the wave of a hand. “Besides, aren’t those the kind of drinks that always make you puke?”

“Well, yes, but that’s just a part of the experience. I have tequila if you have more of an interest in that.”

“I _know_ I’ve dragged you out of parties puking on tequila before.”

“Why are you so hung up on the puking? Get past the puking, Luke. Parties are fun.”

“Just, you can still call me, alright?”

“What?”

“If you need to be dragged out of a party puking. If you need help—”

“I’ve managed two years without you, kid. I won’t need help.”

“But if you do?”

“Fuck Luke, you’re such a buzzkill. Fine, if I need help, I’ll call you.”

Luke finds it impossible to write with Michael in the room.

Now that they’ve settled into the semester, Michael is around more. He spends long evenings banging at his computer, an elaborate PC with two screens that intimidates Luke and his crappy old laptop. More often than not, Ashton is with him, sprawled out on Michael’s bed with headphones on.

Luke is partially relieved that Michael seems to have no interest in him. It’s easier to pretend that he doesn’t exist, even though Luke just seems to end up reblogging old _Civil War_ gifs on Tumblr for hours when he’s around. And Michael is kind of scary, honestly. He does everything so loud, always slamming doors and drawers and the keys on his keyboard. And he’s cool in a way that Luke has never been. He has cool long hair and he’s always wearing cool, oversized jackets and he’s always sighing when he gets text messages, like he’s too cool to answer all of them.

Plus, Michael has Ashton with him like, all the time. Luke still hasn’t figured them out – maybe he reads way too much gay fanfiction, but he’s pretty sure that normal friends don’t follow each other everywhere just to sit in silence, doing separate things. Luke wouldn’t know, because he’s never really had any close friends, but they spend more time together and Jack and Ben ever did with their friends.

On the other hand, they make no sense. Michael doesn’t say much, and when he does it’s usually sarcastic. Ashton is a people magnet – everyone sticks their heads through the door to say hi when he’s around, he has a massive smile for everyone he walks past, he’s always cheerfully starting conversations with Luke, even though he’s never very receptive. And he remembers everything – Luke mentioned that he’s taking introductory sociology once and the next time he came back to his room, there was a stack of flash cards on his bed from when Ashton took the class as a freshman.

And that’s another thing – Ashton and Michael are juniors. Luke had kind of figured this out, as Michael has a bunch of advanced coding textbooks lying around the room and Ashton knows literally every upper year that he comes across, but when Ashton confirms it by explaining that Michael has to stay in the dorms because of his scholarship, Luke feels a whole new wave of inadequacy and inexperience in comparison.

Luke’s upload schedule hasn’t been this bad since he stayed with his grandparents for two weeks the summer after his junior year in high school. He’s been stuck on the same sentence for most of an hour, now. He had given Natasha an out of character, emotional line to inspire Steve, but it’s not sticking. He can’t make Steve respond to it the way he was supposed to, and now he’s rethinking the two thousand words he’s written so far tonight.

Luke has headphones in, but he doesn’t have any music playing, so he hears Ashton say “I’m going to head home for the night, want to come with?”

“Nah, I’m good,” Michael says, and nods his head meaningfully at Luke. Ashton nods his approval and smiles brightly at Luke as he leaves, waving cheerfully.

Once Ashton shuts the door, Michael turns his chair to face Luke. He takes out his earbuds self-consciously.

“What’s up with you and food?” Michael asks, and Luke stares at him blankly. “I’ve never seen you set foot in the dining hall, and all I’ve ever seen you eat up here is peanut butter.”

“What’s wrong with peanut butter?”

“It’s not real food.”

“It is so real food—”

“Then what’s the deal? Are you that picky? Is there something else going on?”

“No, I just—” Luke sighs and looks up at the ceiling, and decides that the embarrassment of the truth is better than the ordeal of a lie. “I don’t know where the dining hall is.”

Michael stares at him. “You’ve been living here more than a month.”

“Yes, I know.”

“And you still can’t find the dining hall?”

“Well, I haven’t looked for it, yet.”

“Why haven’t you asked someone? This is what an RA is for. Or you could have asked me.”

Luke huffs but manages to bring his eyes back down to Michael. “Do you really want me asking you stupid questions?”

“If it’s about a basic necessity, then yes, fucking hell. I’m not a monster.” Michael stands and shrugs his arms into one of his cool, oversized jackets. “Let’s go.”

“What, now?”

“Yes, now. You’ve been in this room all afternoon and I _know_ you didn’t go get lunch.”

“But – I’m just – I’m not good with, you know. New places. Strangers. There are all these rules, only not the actual rules, like. Social rules. And no one tells you where to sit or where to line up, or—”

“Jesus, Luke. I’ll tell you where to fucking sit, just get up. Put your shoes on.”

Luke abandons his writing and follows Michael down to the dining hall, which is embarrassingly easy to find. They don’t talk, and there’s no awkward standing around, trying to figure out where the line is. Once they have their food, Michael sits at the first half-empty table they come upon. Luke hovers for a second and Michael sighs.

“Sit down, I didn’t drag you down here to sit you at a separate table.”

Luke sits and eats his butter chicken, which is extremely mediocre. He wasn’t expecting great things after trying the food at Jack’s old dorm, though, and Michael got pizza so he doesn’t feel like he needs to order health food like he does when he’s with Jack, which is a nice change.

“Am I really that much of an asshole?” Michael says suddenly, mouth full.

“What?”

“Like, you really think I don’t like you? To the point that I wouldn’t show you the dining hall?”

“I don’t know, I just – it seems like you don’t really want a roommate.”

“Well, I don’t really want a roommate. Do you want a roommate?”

“No, I wanted to live with my brother.”

“Exactly, it’s nothing personal.”

“Is that why you always stay at Ashton’s?”

“I don’t always stay at Ashton’s,” Michael says, but he doesn’t offer up an alternative. “Where does your brother live?”

“In an apartment, like ten minutes away. He’s a junior.”

“What does he study?”

“Biology.”

“Oh, Ashton probably knows him, then.”

“Ashton studies biology?”

“No, he studies music history, but he has some friends in biology. What do you study, anyways?”

“Oh, I haven’t declared a major yet.”

“Well what are you thinking?”

“English, I guess.”

“Aren’t you going to ask what I study?”

“No, I already know you’re in computer science. You’ve left like three different Java manuals on my desk.”

“Is that where they are?” he asks, but doesn’t acknowledge Luke’s nod. “So why didn’t you live with your brother?”

“He wanted me to make real friends.”

Michael is silent for a moment, and when Luke looks up from his food, he’s scowling. “You’re making me feel sorry for you, again,” Michael says.

“I’m sorry.”

“What does that even mean? Real friends?”

“Like, real friends, you know? Ones that aren’t on the internet.”

“That shouldn’t be a sentence you had to say.”

“There’s nothing wrong with online friends.”

Michael sighs. “This sucks.”

“What?”

“I have to be your friend, now.”

“No, you don’t, I have plenty of friends. I don’t want you to be my friend.”

“I don’t want to be your friend either, but you’ve ruined that for both of us. Are you done eating?”

Luke looks down at his empty bowl and nods.

“Alright, let’s go. I hate this place.”

“You’re the one who made me come here!”

“You can hate the place and still recognize the fact that you need to eat to live.”

“I _was_ eating, just not here.”

“Shut up, Luke.”

Being Michael’s charity case (Luke found _friend_ to be far too strong a word) doesn’t change much. Luke still puts his headphones in with no music when he needs to get work done and Michael still spends at least half of his nights sleeping somewhere else. The only real difference is that now, at least once a day for dinner but sometimes for breakfast too, Luke goes down to the dining hall with Michael and lets him make fun of everyone who walks past. Sometimes Luke joins in, and Michael always gets all giddy, so Luke tries to do it more and more often.

When Michael is working an evening shift at the campus bookstore or when he doesn’t come back to their room in the morning before class, Luke goes to eat anyways, because Michael will always ask about their mockery victims, like the overkill hipster or the girl who wears a raincoat every day, no matter the weather. Luke’s kind of angry that Michael’s plan is working, but he’s a lot happier to be on speaking terms with the person he lives with, and he’s much less moody now that he’s eating normal food again.

Another change is that Ashton is around even more often, which would be fine, if Luke wasn’t pretty sure that Michael is cheating on him.

A knock comes to the door on a night when Michael’s gone out with some guy named Calum, dressed even better than usual and hair fussed with for far longer than he’d ever admit. Luke doesn’t plan on answering it, but he hears Ashton calling Michael’s name, then his, so he gets up to let him in.

“Where’s Michael?” Ashton says upon entering, but flops down onto his bed as if he were there.

“I don’t know, work, maybe.”

“He doesn’t work tonight.”

“Oh,” Luke says, and keeps standing. He doesn’t want to damage his already shaky relationship with his roommate, but he also doesn’t want Ashton to stay and wait, because Michael never comes home when he goes out dressed like that.

“Sit down, Luke. Relax.”

Luke is still standing, but Ashton doesn’t get up. ““I’m not sure when Michael will be back, and I don’t – I don’t know if you were planning to wait for him, but—”

“It’s fine,” Ashton only settles into Michael’s bed and pulls out his earbuds. “I hate studying on my own, and I figured you’d be around, so—”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing! You’re just always working on something weekend nights. I like to work on things while other people work on things in the same room. So? Can I stay?”

“You don’t have any notes or textbooks,” Luke says.

“I’m studying music history, Luke.”

“Oh, right.”

“So? I can stay?”

“Fine, but I really need to get this done, okay?”

“I’ll be silent,” Ashton promises.

Luke manages to finish and post the night’s chapter of _Stars and Souls_. He’s not been great about updating, especially since he’s started spending a good chunk of his evenings in the dining hall with Michael. He thinks it’s probably worth it, but he still feels kind of bad.

The thing is, everyone knows that whatever happens with Steve and Bucky, it’ll happen in _Avengers 4_. Chris Evans isn’t coming back, so this is it. This is the last chance that the fandom has to get their what-ifs out when they still don’t have the canonical answers. Luke spent all of his summer writing this fic, and it’s already by far the longest one he’s ever written.

It’s his resolution fic, starting up right after the end of _Infinity War_ and he’s determined to finish it before the last movie of the saga comes out. He’s not the only one writing their own version of a conclusion, but, and he’s self-aware enough to recognize it, he’s writing one of the biggest ones.

He gets thousands of hits on every chapter, at minimum dozens of anon messages to his Tumblr inbox after every upload. People online tell Luke every day that for them, his story is the right ending, that they’ll never look at canon the same way again.

When Luke started writing fanfiction, back when _Winter Soldier_ came out, he was writing for himself. Now, it’s hard to remember sometimes that it’s the whole reason he’s doing this. He feels responsible, and he’s not sure when he went from a fanboy to a voice in the fandom. He mostly enjoys the attention, it feels good to read comment after comment telling him that he’s an amazing writer. Sometimes, though, he misses the days when it was just him and his small group of Tumblr friends, gifting each other fics and chatting way too late on _WhatsApp_.

Luke reaches over to set his laptop on his desk and his back cracks. He looks over at Ashton while he stretches – it’s late, really late, and he’s not sure if Ashton meant to fall asleep here, and he thinks it’s probably weird to let his roommate’s boyfriend sleep in his room when he’s not there.

“Ashton,” he says, not quite at full voice. “Ashton, are you awake?”

Ashton mumbles indistinctly, so Luke sighs and settles in to sleep. It doesn’t feel weird sleeping in the same room as Michael anymore, and apparently that has extended to Ashton too, because Luke doesn’t lie awake for long.

Luke goes home for Thanksgiving, but Jack stays at school. He has a good time – a great time, really. The thing is, once he gets back, he just realizes how much he would rather be home.

Michael’s out even more than he was before, and now Luke’s lucky to eat dinner with him more than three times a week. Ashton isn’t around much either, apparently picking up extra shifts at the _Starbucks_ off campus where he works before the holidays.

Luke’s stressed about exams and final papers, and he’s very stressed because he got an F on his last creative writing assignment. His professor had asked him to stay after class until the room was empty, so that horribly, embarrassingly, he had to sit while she explained to him that although his writing was very strong, using existing characters, even when writing an original story, is still plagiarism.

And Luke feels like such an idiot, because he never should have turned in fanfiction anyways, he knows about elitism and gatekeeping in academics, but the prompt was to write about a character out of time, and Luke knows characters out of time. All he ever writes about are characters out of time. The piece he’d written for that prompt was some of the best he’d ever done, and he hadn’t even posted it, and now he never will out of embarrassment.

He’s called Jack ten times already, but Jack isn’t answering. He doesn’t know what to do, he can’t talk about this to anyone else, he doesn’t even know if he can talk about it with Jack. He’s never failed anything in his life before, the lowest grade he’s ever received is a B.

Luke tries to think about what Jack might do if he were here, but all that comes to mind is playing obnoxiously loud pop-punk music. When one of them was upset , or pissed, or whatever as kids, him or Jack or Ben, they’d all hole up in Luke and Jack’s room, because it was bigger, and blast MCR or Green Day and scream and jump and it didn’t fix anything, but they would do it until the brother in need felt a little less desperate, maybe.

It feels stupid to do it alone, but Luke plays “Helena” and turns the volume as high as it will go. It’s Friday night and the dorms are empty, and if someone complains, whatever. He’s been a perfect resident and he’ll turn it down if anyone asks.

He just listens at first, but as the chorus comes on, Luke stands and starts to dance, or jump, at least. It’s stupid and he feels like a kid again, but it does help.

He gets through three songs and then there’s knocking at the door.

Luke rushes to open it without turning down the music, planning to immediately reassure whoever’s there that he will stop, immediately, but it’s just Ashton.

“What is this?” Ashton yells, but he’s grinning.

“Music! Michael’s not here!”

“This is your music?”

“Yes!”

“I didn’t think this would be your kind of music!”

“Fuck you!” Luke yells, and goes to shut the door, but his energy is still up from the music so he doesn’t fight Ashton when he stops him.

“No, I like it! But what is it about?”

“It’s an emergency MCR dance party!”

“What is that?”

“It’s what it sounds like!”

Ashton laughs and brushes past Luke into the room. As “Teenagers” begins to play, Ashton starts to dance, and so Luke starts to dance, and soon they’re screaming the lyrics at each other, bouncing all over the room as the song changes again.

Then the door swings open, bumping into Luke’s hip. He flails over to his computer and stops the music, as Michael looks between them in poorly disguised surprise.

“What the fuck?”

“Emergency MCR dance party,” Ashton explains, like it’s obvious, and Michael just shakes his head. Luke looks away – is it weird to dance with your roommate’s boyfriend? It’s probably weird.

“You’re both so fucking weird,” Michael says as he changes his work shirt for a black oversized sweater. “I’m going out. Are you coming?”

Luke figures that he’s asking Ashton, so he settles down on his bed, and Michael looks down with an unreadable expression. “Come out with us,” Michael says, which surprises Luke more than it should, by now. “Seriously. We’ll look after you, and we’ll make sure you have fun.”

“No, I shouldn’t – I have so much to do tonight—” Luke reaches out for his phone, planning to pretend to have received a text to avoid the conversation. He sees that he’s missed a message from Jack though, and his stomach drops.

“Can you pick me up? I’m at Muggsy’s.”

“You okay?” Ashton asks.

Luke shakes his head in confusion. “My brother is – what’s Muggsy’s?”

“Trashy bar near East Campus,” Michael explains. “They never card. Why?”

Luke shakes his head again. “He wants me to go get him.”

Ashton frowns and reaches for Luke’s phone. He hands it over without hesitation. “I have my car here. I can take you.”

They look at each other a moment, then Michael sighs.

“Do you need me?”

“Do we need him?” Ashton asks, and it takes Luke a moment to understand he’s talking to him.

Luke shakes his head.

“Are you sure? Because I will cancel my plans if you need me.”

“We’re fine,” Ashton answers for him. “Tell Calum I said hi.”

“Call me if you need me, okay?”

Luke crawls up into Ashton’s truck and gives him a look as he turns the key in the ignition.

“The place I come from is basically just farmland,” Ashton says, as if it explains.

“How far is it?” he asks. It’s been half an hour now since he got the text.

“Ten minutes from here, maybe?”

“They won’t let me in, I don’t have a fake ID.”

“Muggsy’s never cards, you’ll be fine.”

They park a few blocks away from the bar, and Luke is starting to get nervous, now. He realizes that he’s still in his pajama pants, and he looks even younger than he really is. When they finally get up to the door, the guy there smiles and greets Ashton. They chat a few moments, and then they’re being let in. The guy didn’t even look at Luke.

Luke walks forward, only there’s so many people, it’s crowded and dark and Luke doesn’t even know where to start. He turns back to Ashton with wide eyes.

“Alright, come on,” Ashton grabs Luke’s arm and guides him around tables and clusters of drunk college students falling into each other until Luke finally spots a flash of blond curls, tall over the crowds, and points.

Ashton pushes them over, and Luke calls Jack’s name.

When Jack hears, he turns and his eyes widen in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” Luke screams over the music. His voice is going to be gone in the morning. “You texted me! You asked me to pick you up?”

Jack looks at his phone. “Oh, shit, that was meant for Levi.”

‘Well whatever, I’m here now. Let’s go.”

“No, I’m staying.”

“What? You asked me to pick you up!”

“No, I asked Levi to pick me up because he’s being lame and didn’t want to come out! He was supposed to come party with us!”

“What?” Luke screeches.

“It’s alright, Luke,” Ashton says at his back. “Let’s just go.”

“No, if you’re too drunk to know who you’re texting, you’re too drunk to be out alone. Let’s go!”

“I’m not alone, Mali is here!”

“Where is she?”

“Bathroom!”

“Luke,” Ashton says again.

“I don’t want to leave him like this,” Luke says to Ashton, low enough that Jack can’t hear.

“You’re not going to get him to go, though. We can stay, if you want, but his friends are here. He’ll be okay.”

Luke sighs and turns back to Jack. “I’m so fucking mad at you!”

“Whatever!”

Ashton pulls him away and out of the bar before he can scream any more, which is probably for the best. Once they’re outside and Luke can hear properly again, he grumbles to Ashton “I don’t like this.”

“He’s old enough to know what he’s doing, I think.”

“I’m not a kid,” Luke says defiantly.

“I wasn’t saying you were. I just mean he’s been doing this a while, right?”

“Yeah—”

“Then I think he probably knows how to handle himself.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Luke starts walking for the car and Ashton jumps forward to walk next to him.

“Well then, are you hungry?”

“No.”

“But I’m hungry. Please come eat with me.”

“I’m in pajamas.”

“You could literally wear a garbage bag to the place I’m thinking of,” Ashton says. They get to the car and sit without moving for a moment. “So?”

“Fine,” Luke says.

Ashton was right, the pajama pants were not out of place in the twenty-four-hour truck stop diner near the edge of town. The waitress chats with Ashton, because of course she does, and she pours them coffee without asking if they want any.

“What do you want?” Ashton asks, and when Luke shakes his head, Ashton orders some sort of hash brown skillet.

When the waitress is gone, Ashton folds his hands on the table. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” Luke asks.

“Your brother? The emergency dance party? Whatever else might be bothering you?”

“Not really.”

“Not really to which one?”

“Not really to all of the above.”

“Well, we don’t have to talk if you really don’t want to, but I think it might help you if you do.”

Luke glares at him.

“I have a younger sister, and a younger brother too,” Ashton says. “I’m very good at gentle support. I can sit here and quietly encourage you all night.”

“I don’t know where I would even start.”

“Start with your brother, maybe? Why are you so upset about that whole thing?”

Luke looks at his hands for a long moment. “I don’t know, it’s sounds stupid when I actually put it into words.”

“I bet it doesn’t.”

“I know I’m younger than him, alright? I know I’m the dumb kid who doesn’t understand parties, but – I don’t know. We’ve always done everything together. We’ve always needed each other. I knew that it would be different, because he’d been gone two years without me, but—”

“You thought he’d still need you?” Ashton finishes when Luke trails off, and he nods. “He does still need you, I’m sure he does. Just not for this.”

Ashton’s food comes – a massive plate with hash browns and scrambled eggs and bacon and onions and peppers and cheese. He slides the plate into the middle and hands Luke a fork, so Luke starts to eat. Now that there’s food in front of him, he finds he is pretty hungry.

“I failed an assignment,” Luke says, as soon as the waitress is gone.

“What?”

“The emergency MCR dance party? I failed an assignment. I’ve never done that before.”

“How much was it worth?”

“Five percent.”

“Alright, well that’s not too bad,” Ashton says. “You can come back from that, no problem. How are you doing in the class otherwise?”

“Good, but that’s not really – I’m not worried about that, as much.”

“What are you worried about, then?”

Luke sighs. “My professor – she asked us to write a scene about a character out of time, so I wrote about Bucky and Steve, and she just – she didn’t get it. She said it was plagiarism.”

“Bucky and Steve? Like from the _Avengers_?” Ashton asks, and Luke nods. “Like fanfiction?” Luke nods again.

“I know it was stupid.”

“But it was still your story, right? Your words?” he asks, and Luke nods. “Did she say anything about reporting you to the academic board?”

“No? Do you think she will?”

“No, she would have told you. It’s fine, Luke. You didn’t know and now you do, and you won’t do it again.”

“I know, I just – I feel so stupid.”

Ashton laughs, but it’s a kind laugh, like he’s sharing his bottomless good mood with Luke. “You’re not stupid. You made a mistake, and professors can be jerks.”

Luke nods and takes another bite. “So,” Ashton says, “You write fanfiction?”

“Can we not be hung up on this, please?”

“Fanfiction about Captain America and his best friend?”

“Lots of people do it, it’s not that weird.”

“I’m not saying it’s weird,” Ashton smiles. “I’m trying to learn more. What do they do in your fanfiction?”

“Lots of things, I don’t know.”

“What kind of things?”

“Mostly right now they’re trying to get Bucky and everyone else out of the Soul Stone. But they fall in love a lot, too.”

“I see,” Ashton smiles and takes a massive bite.

“It’s not weird,” Luke says again.

“It’s not weird,” Ashton agrees. Luke feels his face twitch into a smile, and tries to hide it by forcing way too much food into his mouth.

Ashton smiles wider and pushes the plate further towards Luke.

Despite Luke’s constant social failings, he realizes as exams begin to approach that he’s actually managed to make something that resemble friends. The thing is, he’s a freshman, in mostly intro courses, and everyone else is desperately trying to make friends, so there comes a point where Luke would have to be blatantly rude to not be friendly with these people. So he finds himself in two study groups that meet up twice a week, each, and he always sits near the same girl in Fiction-Writing that he pairs up with for a couple of partner projects, and sometimes they get coffee after class and talk about their assignments. Ashton and Michael invite him out to parties consistently, and he never goes, but they hang out with him in the dorm room.

He’s still not good with people, he’s not outgoing, and he’s definitely not seeking out interaction, but it is getting easier. He’s still not speaking to Jack, though, so he can’t tell him that he was right.

Luke is trying to finish at least a draft of his final paper for sociology when he hears a knock on the door. He almost ignores it, because the only person that’s not Michael who ever comes to their room is Ashton, and he never knocks, but Luke is making an effort to prove to himself that he can live in a society, so he gets up and opens the door.

The guy standing in front of him is absolutely beautiful, and Luke stares for a second.

“Uh, I’m supposed to meet Michael here?” he says, and Luke looks away quickly.

“He’s still at work, I think. You can wait in here if you want? I’m just working on a paper.”

“Sure, thanks,” the guys walks in and his eyes roam immediately over to Michael’s side of the room, smiling when he sees the mess of textbooks and video games.

Luke settles back in with his flashcards and the guy sits on Michael’s bed. He picks up a musician’s biography that Michael has had lying around for months but Luke has never seen him actually read.

Luke studies and Michael’s friend reads in silence, and then Luke realizes that he didn’t introduce himself and that was probably weird but now it’s too late to do anything about it.

Michael finally bangs into the room after another half hour, spots the guy, and says “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, someone knocked over the shelf of plush viruses and I had to stay, give me like two minutes to change—”

“It’s cool,” the guy says. Michael digs through his closet for a jacket and then grabs his toothbrush.

“Luke, talk to Calum for a minute, I’ll be right back.”

“Oh, _you’re_ Calum,” Luke says, because he’s heard that name a lot, but Calum blushes and Luke feels bad. “Sorry, I’m Luke.”

“Yes, the roommate, I figured.”

“Oh,” Luke says, and they fall into an awkward silence. “Um, what do you study?”

“Science, I might want to do sports medicine if I’m good enough.”

“Oh, that’s cool.”

“What about you?”

“English,” Luke says without thinking, even though he’s been reconsidering ever since the thing with his writing professor.

“That’s cool.”

They fall into an awkward silence again, and Michael comes back into the room. “Honestly, you two,” he sighs. “Are you ready to go?” he asks, and Calum nods and stands. “See you tomorrow,” Michael calls to Luke as he shuts the door.

Luke settles back into his assignment, gets a bit lost in it until he realizes he’s been thirsty since Michael and Calum left, over an hour ago. He goes to the kitchen to fill his water bottle and when he comes back, Ashton is sitting outside of his room with his bag at his feet and his head in his hands. He looks up when Luke stops in front of his feet.

“Michael went out?”

Luke nods. “Like an hour and a half ago, now. He said he’ll be back tomorrow.”

Ashton nods and runs his fingers through his hair. “Fuck.”

“What is it?”

“He was supposed to help me study.”

“I can help, if you want.”

Ashton sighs. “Are you sure? I don’t want to interrupt anything—”

“I can help, I want to help.”

Luke reaches a hand out and Ashton takes it, lets Luke pull him up. He lets them into the room.

“So what are we working on? Need me to quiz you?’

“No, it’s not that kind of studying,” Ashton reaches into his bad and pulls out a thin book. He hands it over to Luke.

“ _The Time Machine_? I’ve never read this.”

“Me neither, that’s why Michael was going to help me.”

“I thought you studied music history?”

“I do, but I have to meet the literature requirements like anyone else.”

Luke flips through – the writing is small and dense, but the book is only 76 pages. “When do you need to be done?”

“The test is tomorrow afternoon.”

“So read it,” Luke says. “It’s short, you have time.”

Ashton groans. “That’s not – I’m not good at reading.”

Luke stares at him. “How can you be bad at reading? You read. I’ve seen you read.”

“Textbooks, maybe. I can’t do fiction.”

“I’m confused.”

“I shouldn’t have asked you,” Ashton reaches to snatch the book away but Luke turns to keep it. “You don’t get it.”

“So explain it to me,” Luke says, and Ashton deflates a little. He sits on Michael’s bed and pulls his knees up.

“It’s like the words go right through me, I don’t know. I can’t hold onto what’s happening. I listen to audiobooks if I can but this one wasn’t available.”

“What does Michael usually do to help?”

“Goes over the important parts, tells me which paragraphs I should highlight—”

“You highlight in your books?” Luke says, offended.

“Not the time, Luke.”

Luke flips through the pages again and settles down into his desk chair, then he starts to read out loud.

“Luke, you don’t have to do that.”

“I know,” he says, and starts again.

“Luke—”

“Shut up, we need to start if we want to get this done tonight.” This time, when Luke starts to read, Ashton lets him.

Luckily for Luke, _The Time Machine_ uses a convenient framing device that reads like an oral history, so it’s easy to forget he’s reading out loud. Luke manages about an hour and a half before he has to drop the book to his lap.

“You don’t have to keep doing this,” Ashton says.

“No, I want to keep going, I just—” Luke shakes his empty bottle of water. “My throat is just really dry.”

“Oh,” Ashton jumps up. “Let me fill that. Or I could get something else. Do you want coffee? Tea?”

“I could go for a coffee—”

“Be back in ten,” Ashton says, and he’s gone before Luke has a chance to change his mind.

Luke stretches while Ashton’s gone, walks down the hall and goes to the bathroom, fills his water bottle, then swings his arms around when he’s back to his room. He sits on his bed with his back up against the wall and checks his phone, and then Ashton is back with two _Starbucks_ cups.

“I know you like the gingerbread lattes, so I got one of those, but I also got a caramel macchiato just in case—”

Luke reaches out for the gingerbread latte and doesn’t ask how Ashton knows. He assumes he’s mentioned it once and Ashton’s remembered, because Ashton remembers everything.

“Thank you,” he says, and Ashton settles down next to him, shoulder to shoulder, legs pressed together. Luke doesn’t want to think about how much he’s enjoying it, so he starts to read again.

They get another third of the way through the book, and Luke’s voice is starting to get scratchy.

“Need a break?” Ashton asks, but Luke shakes his head. He takes a long gulp of water then shifts around, trying to get comfortable.

It’s late, and Luke is sleepy. He’s barely processing the words he’s reading anymore.

“Here,” Ashton says, and takes Luke’s shoulders and shifts them around until they’re both lying down, on their sides, facing each other. Ashton has his arm out under Luke’s head. “Is this better?”

Luke nods and sets the book up between them, open against Ashton’s chest.

“Hey,” Ashton says as Luke opens his mouth to read. “Thank you.”

“I owed you one. Probably more than one, actually.”

“Still, thank you.”

He looks Luke right in the eyes, and Luke’s maybe never been this close to someone he isn’t related to before. He nods and looks back down at the book, and Ashton lets him start to read again.

The end of the book comes quick, and as soon as Luke reads the last few words, he lets his eyes fall closed.

He drops the book between them and wonders what he’s supposed to do now. In a fanfic, this would be the part where they declare their love for each other, probably. But this isn’t a fanfic, and this isn’t his childhood-best-friend-turned-long-lost-love, this is his roommate’s maybe boyfriend.

Ashton reaches for Luke’s waist and pulls him in. Luke forces his eyes open and they’re close – they’re so close. Ashton drops his forehead to Luke’s and their mouths fall together, soft and open.

Luke’s eyes fall closed again, and they stick, a bit. He wants to be more awake, he wants to be aware of every part of this. He’s never been kissed like this before, deep and real. But it’s so, so late and he’s been reading for so long and Ashton is so warm and right against him.

Luke doesn’t know when he falls asleep, but he knows he doesn’t mean to.

Luke wakes up when the door slams closed. He’s instantly very aware of Ashton, pressed chest to chest, arms around him, legs tangled together.

He turns his head, blinking slowly, and sees Michael standing just past the doorway.

Luke sits up and tries to shrink into himself as much as possible. He can’t look at Michael. Ashton shifts and checks his phone.

“Fuck, I have to be at work in like, three minutes.” He crawls past Luke and finds his coat and slides into his shoes, and leaves without looking at either Michael or Luke.

Ashton is gone for a minute, then two, and Michael still hasn’t moved.

“We fell asleep reading,” Luke says, voice small.

“Reading,” Michael says expressionlessly.

Luke fishes around his bed and holds out _The Time Machine_.

“Oh, fuck.”

Luke just nods and twists his fingers together.

“I’m sorry,” Luke breathes.

Michael shakes his head. “Don’t.”

“But he’s your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“But—”

“He was, a really long time ago, and it’s just – I just didn’t expect this to happen. I’ve always been Ashton’s favourite.”

“You still are,” Luke says, and he knows that it’s true.

“Don’t be stupid on purpose, Luke. It’s not a good look on you.” Michael finally moves, grabs his towel and shower caddy. “I’m going to shower and when I come back, I’m going to be over it, alright?”

“But—”

“Shut up, Luke.”

When Michael comes back, he _is_ actually over it. Or, at least, he seems to be. Luke isn’t entirely convinced, because even if they’re not together, they’ve always kind of acted like they were.

Michael drags Luke down to the dining hall once he’s back. Luke doesn’t want to go, because his hair is a mess and his eyes are red and puffy from crying and if he weren’t Michael’s roommate, he’d be exactly the kind of person Michael would make fun of.

He’s hungry though, and he doesn’t want Michael to have any reason to be mad at him, so he goes. They get their food and sit, and Luke is the one to finally break the silence.

“Why did you break up?”

Michael sighs. “You’re not asking the right question.”

“What is the right question?”

“Why we were together in the first place,” Michael says. “Where we come from, there aren’t a whole lot of options, okay? There were fourteen people in our graduating class. He was the only person in a two-hundred-mile radius that I would have even considered dating.”

“Were you in love with him?”

“Yes,” Michael says. Luke doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it somehow wasn’t this. “I loved him more than he ever loved me.”

“Is that why you broke up?”

Michael takes a long pause. “Yes and no, I think. When we got here, we realized that we weren’t the only people in the world worth our time.”

“He found someone else?”

“No, I did,” Michael says, and Luke takes a bite of his breakfast to hide his surprise. “I realized that it’s not that hard to get people to love you when you’re not in love with them.”

“I’m sorry,” Luke says, because it’s a very sad thing to say, even if Michael sounds matter of fact about it. Michael just shakes his head. “Do you still love him?”

“Not like that, not for a long time.”

“Okay,” Luke says.

“Ran out of questions?” Michael smiles, and Luke knows that he’s okay with all of this. With him and Ashton, if there is a him and Ashton.

“For now.”

Luke is writing for _Stars and Souls_ when he gets the text. It’s from Ashton, and his chest squeezes when he sees the name.

It reads “Party at mine tomorrow, please come?”

Luke sits with it all day but doesn’t respond. He doesn’t think he can. It’s too big, too charged. His response would change them forever, and he doesn’t know if he’s ready for that to happen.

If Michael knows about the text, he does a very good job pretending he doesn’t. He sleeps in their room that night and they don’t talk about Ashton.

Luke spends the entire next day alternating between writing and studying, and by evening, he’s fidgety and wired. So when Michael gets back from work in his usual flurry and says “I’m going to Ashton’s party, are you coming with?” Luke doesn’t surprise himself with an agreement.

“Sure.”

Michael stumbles over nothing but doesn’t stop in his preparation. “Okay, well, I’m just going to change, and then—”

“Okay,” Luke says, and they don’t look at each other as they finish getting ready.

Michael drives them, and honestly, Luke didn’t even know that he had a car. Another day, Luke might have asked him about it, teased him about it. Luke is nervous, though, so he doesn’t.

Ashton lives in a house off campus with a bunch of his friends, but Luke doesn’t think they’re friends that he’s ever met. Ashton has such a broad definition of the word friend that Luke has a hard time keeping track.

Luke hesitates when they get to the front steps and Michael’s eyes soften, which Luke does not want.

“Let’s just go in,” Luke huffs.

“I’m not going to abandon you in there, not unless you want me to.”

Luke nods.

“And we can go whenever you want.”

“I’m fine, Michael,” Luke says, and forces himself to walk up the steps. He knocks on the door, but no one answers, and Michael chuckles gently behind him.

“You just go in,” Michael says, so Luke opens the door to exactly what he would have pictured.

It’s crowded and everyone is holding red cups or beer cans. The music is loud, and he doesn’t recognize it, and there’s a table set up for beer pong, which Luke has only ever seen in trashy CW shows.

He’s overwhelmed, and it’s obvious. Michael steps in front of Luke and pulls him by the wrist through the living room. Everyone seems to know Michael, lots of people are stopping them to say hello. Someone offers Michael a beer but he declines, says “driving,” and that’s that. Someone offers Luke a beer, too, and he shakes his head with wide eyes. He almost tells them that he’s underage, but stops himself in time, saving himself the humiliation. There’s no peer pressure or anything, which is kind of disappointing considering how well his high school assemblies had prepared him for it.

Michael pushes through to an open doorway, which Luke can see is a kitchen. Luke is following Michael as close as he can, so when Michael comes to an abrupt stop in the doorway, Luke bumps into him.

“Shit,” Michael says, and then Luke sees what Michael sees. At first, it’s just two people, making out, uncomfortably open against the counter. Luke’s instinct is to look away, but then he notices the curls, and the strong arms, and the long eyelashes fanned across his cheeks, and he turns. The image of Ashton’s hand, spread wide on the girl’s back is burned in his mind, though.

Luke turns and walks right back through the party to the front door, then outside. He can hear Michael following behind him, muttering “fuck, fuck, fuck.”

They don’t talk about it.

When Luke and Michael get back to their room, Luke buries himself immediately under the covers.

“I’m sorry,” Michael says. “I really didn’t think that would happen.”

“I don’t care,” Luke says, voice muffled. “Seriously, but I don’t want to ever talk about it again. I want to pretend it never happened.”

“Okay,” Michael says, and that’s what they do.

Ashton doesn’t show up in their dorm room, which Luke half attributes to the busy whirlwind of exams and half attributes to Michael running interference.

Ashton does call Luke though, and texts several times a day. He answers one, just says that he’s busy and stressed with exams, and ignores all the rest.

The exams, Luke finds, aren’t actually that bad. He’s good at studying, and he’s good at tests. They’re spread out over the exam period, so he has lots of time between each to prepare. Luke’s writing a lot, too. He’s updating most nights, because writing is his favourite study break.

Specifically, Luke is writing _Stars and Souls_ , and he’s not writing his final assignment for Fiction-Writing. It’s worth forty percent of his grade, and it’s ten thousand words. Luke has started it over and over, but he can’t seem to get an idea to stick. The characters always end up some cheap versions of his fanfic characters, which just reminds him of the plagiarism situation and upsets him.

The last weekend of term sneaks up on him. He’s only got one more exam, and it’s on Wednesday, and it’s sociology, which he is already overprepared for, so he locks himself in his room while Michael is at work and promises himself that he won’t leave until he has at least five thousand words down.

Five thousand words is nothing. Luke often writes five thousand words a night, if not more. Five thousand words is the average chapter of _Stars and Souls_. And they don’t have to be five thousand good words, they just have to be words.

He starts writing about a couple that’s getting a divorce, and he gets a thousand words in before he realizes that he doesn’t know anything about couples that get divorced. He starts writing about a man who becomes disillusioned with his job and untrustworthy superiors, but he realizes he’s getting dangerously close to the tone of _Winter Soldier_ , and deletes it all even though it was pretty well-written. He starts to write about a guy who’s in love with someone who doesn’t see him, but realizes he’s really just writing about Ashton and scraps it, too.

Luke stares at a blank Word document for half an hour before he realizes that he doesn’t want to write this story. It’s horrible, but it’s also a relief. He’s just not someone that can write original characters – he never puts them in his fics. He’s a fanfiction writer, and that’s the only kind of writer he wants to be. Thousands of people are reading and loving his work there. Only one person is ever going to read this assignment, and he’s already decided that he doesn’t care about their opinion. Luke could write ten thousand words of bullshit and he wouldn’t think twice about handing it in.

Luke falls asleep stretched out in bed with his laptop on his thighs. He wakes with a start to his phone ringing, and the laptop slides off his lap into the wall with a concerning bang.

He fumbles for his phone and sees first that it’s 4am, and second that it’s his dad calling. The two facts don’t mesh in Luke’s mind, so he answers without even considering the reason he would be calling at this time of day.

“Hello?” Luke says, groggy.

“Luke?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you awake?” his dad asks. There’s something in his voice that makes Luke sit up straight in bed.

“What’s happened?”

“It’s okay, everyone is going to be okay—”

“What’s happening, dad?”

“Jack’s in the hospital with alcohol poisoning,” he says carefully, and Luke gasps. “He’ll be okay, and we’re about to be on our way. It’ll take us a while to get there, though—”

“I’ll get there, I’ll be there.”

“I know you have one more exam, it’s okay if you need to stay—”

“No, no way. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Okay, call mom when you get there. I’ll be driving.”

They hang up and Luke flies around his room, getting dressed. Luke calls Ben first, even though Ben lives even further than their parents now, but he doesn’t answer. Luke’s next call is Michael, because Michael has a car, and Michael would understand, but he doesn’t answer either.

Luke sits back on his bed and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. He refuses to cry.

After a few minutes, he pulls himself together and calls Ashton.

He answers after only two rings, and he sounds groggy but he’s there. “Luke?”

“Ashton,” Luke says, and then he stops. He doesn’t know how to start.

“Are you okay?”

A small noise escapes Luke without his permission – something of a whimper. He swallows it down hard. “I know it’s late, and it’s exam period, but can you drive me to the hospital? It’s a family emergency.”

“Shit, Luke,” Ashton says, he hears shuffling. “What’s happening?”

“Jack has alcohol poisoning,” Luke says, “I’m overreacting, I know, I just—”

“You’re not, I understand,” Ashton’s voice is muffled for a second, then Luke hears a door slam. “I’ll be outside your dorm in ten minutes, tops.”

Luke spends half of those ten minutes fighting not to cry, and the other half waiting down at the doors. When Ashton pulls up, Luke climbs into the truck before Ashton can get out.

Ashton has classical music playing, and Luke assumes it’s his version of studying. It does calm him a bit, though.

They don’t really talk, Ashton tells him that it’ll take around twenty minutes to get to the hospital. “St. Elizabeth’s, right?”

Luke nods, even though he’s not actually sure. It’s the only one in town.

The song only changes once before they arrive. The new one is more cheerful and makes Luke feel worse.

“You can just drop me off here,” Luke says. “Thank you for doing this, I know it’s late.”

“You shouldn’t go in alone,” Ashton says, and parks the car. Luke doesn’t argue, he just lets Ashton follow him up to the reception desk.

“I’m here to see my brother? Jack Hemmings? My name is Luke Hemmings?”

It’s a nurse at the desk, and she looks tired, and like this is way below her level of qualification. “Take a seat,” she gestures to the waiting area. “Someone will be out to update you shortly.”

“Can’t I see him?”

“You need to wait for a doctor,” she says, but she sounds like she feels a little bad for him, at least.

Luke folds himself into the nearest seat he can find and Ashton follows right along.

“You don’t have to stay,” Luke says as Ashton sits next to him, too close in the small chairs. “My parents will be here in a few hours.”

“What else do I have to do at 5 in the morning on a Sunday?” Ashton says, trying for a joke, and it immediately sobers Luke.

“Seriously, Ashton. I really, really appreciate your help, but you can go.”

“Are you really that mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you,” Luke says, but it doesn’t even sound believable to him.

“You’re avoiding me. You’re always gone when I’m in your room and Michael won’t talk about you anymore.”

Luke ignores the implication that they used to talk about him enough for the absence of the topic to be notable. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It is to me, I miss seeing you,” Ashton says, and it’s too honest. It stings in a way it shouldn’t. “It this because of the kiss?”

Luke doesn’t know how to answer that, so he doesn’t. He stares at the floor and lets Ashton figure out the answer for himself.

“I’m sorry. I thought – well, I guess I misread you. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t.”

“Didn’t misread you? Or didn’t make you uncomfortable?”

“Both.”

Ashton falls silent for a moment. “Then why have you been avoiding me?”

Luke takes a long pause, tries to come up with something to say, a way to squash this topic so that it would never come up again. But it’s too late at night, or too early in the morning, and Luke is scared and raw and what comes out is; “I saw you kissing that girl, that night at that party at your house.”

Luke doesn’t look up at Ashton, but he can hear in his voice that his face has fallen. “I didn’t know you were there. I didn’t think you would come.”

“Well, I did.”

“You didn’t answer my text, I thought I’d fucked up. If I’d just known—”

Luke shakes his head. “What? You wouldn’t have made out with somebody else?”

Ashton seems to have nothing to say, for once. Luke feels him shift in his chair, dropping his head to his hands, elbows on his knees.

“I’m sorry, Luke. It was just a kiss.”

Ashton seems to realize immediately that he’s said the wrong thing, because he sits straight again.

“Which one?” Luke says, small and broken. He looks up just as Ashton turns to look at him, eyes wide, and he has his answer.

“Luke Hemmings?”

Luke tears his eyes away from Ashton to the doctor standing at the edge of the hallway. Luke jumps up.

“Wait,” Ashton says, and it’s once again the wrong thing to say.

“Please go, Ashton,” Luke says, and surges forward to speak to the doctor.

He asks Luke a lot of questions that Luke can’t answer. He doesn’t know what Jack had been drinking or where, he doesn’t know who he had been with or who had dropped him off at the hospital. When the doctor seems to be wrapping up, Luke blurts “Can I please see him?”

“Yes, that should be fine—”

The doctor leads him down the hall, and Luke can’t help but turn back, but Ashton is already gone.

Jack is alone in the room, the other bed empty. It’s dark and his eyes are closed, but Luke is pretty sure that he’s awake.

“Is there anything I need to do? To watch for?”

“He’s just resting, now,” The doctor says. “His breathing and his oxygen are good, and he was talking a few minutes ago. It’s a scare, this time.”

Luke swallows hard and nods, then the doctor is gone. There’s a chair next to the bed and Luke curls into it, watching. Jack looks almost grey, and Luke reaches out to touch his face, to see if it’s as cold as it looks.

“I’m awake,” Jack sighs. It’s the first they’ve spoken in weeks, and Luke realizes that this has been the longest they’ve gone without seeing each other, ever.

“What happened?” Luke asks.

“I don’t remember.”

“Where were Mali and Levi?”

“Not their fault, they stayed home studying.”

“Then who brought you in?”

“No idea.”

“Fuck, Jack.”

Jack just groans, and Luke thinks he’s fallen back asleep for a few minutes. “Who called you?” he asks, startling Luke.

“Dad. He and mom are on their way,” Luke says and Jack groans again. “What did you expect? They had to call someone; you were brought in alone.”

“I just feel like an idiot,” Jack mumbles. “Stupid. And sick. I feel sick.”

“Want me to get a nurse?”

Jack shakes his head. “Want to sleep.”

“Sleep, I’ll be here.”

They send Jack home in the evening, a few hours after their parents get in. They stop by Luke’s dorm so he can pick some things up, and then Jack’s apartment. Luke waits in the car with his dad.

“You should stay,” his dad says, and it takes Luke a long moment to understand what he’s talking about.

“No, after this? No, I can’t.”

“You have one more exam, then you’re done. He’s going to be fine.”

“I can’t,” Luke says again, and his dad nods and drops it.

Christmas break is tense, and awkward. Jack is embarrassed and hides under his covers most of the time. Ben and his girlfriend are visiting, and Luke can tell that Ben is pissed at him for letting Jack get so out of control, but he won’t say it, so they’re just avoiding each other. Luke does feel guilty, and it’s making him moody and irritable. Their mom is upset and worried, and keeps dropping hints that Jack should take the semester off and stay home.

They make it through Christmas Day on Luke’s dad’s perseverance alone, but things come to a head on Boxing Day.

Ben comes into Luke and Jack’s room when they’re both awake but still in bed. He drags a chair to sit right in between the ends of their beds.

He waits, and Luke hides his face in his pillow. Jack is the first to speak, because he’s always been the most impulsive of the three.

“We really don’t need to talk about this.”

“You were hospitalized, we’re talking about it,” Ben says firmly, playing the responsible older brother to Jack’s recklessness and Luke’s timidity.

“But we all know how it’s going to go, so there’s no point,” Jack says, and sits up properly. “You’re going to say that I’ve been stupid and that I shouldn’t drink so much, and I’m going to say that you’re right, and that I won’t do it again, and Luke’s the only one who’s going to believe it.”

“You think I’m going to trust you after this term?” Luke says, finally sitting as well.

“Oh, so you think you’re innocent, here?” Ben says and Luke winces.

“No, I know I fucked up too—”

“It’s not his fault,” Jack interrupts. “I kept blowing him off.”

“Which he should have seen through—”

“He’s still a kid, Ben. He didn’t know. It’s not his job to know. I’m supposed to be the one looking out for him.”

“We all know that Luke’s never needed that kind of looking after.”

They fall silent for a moment, and despite everything he’s ever known about himself and about their dynamics, Luke breaks it.

“What happens now?”

Ben looks a bit surprised, but Jack doesn’t. “We go back to school, we keep living our lives. This sucked, but we can’t change everything just because it happened.”

“Things have to change, Jack,” Ben says. “This can’t happen again. You could have died.”

The seriousness of the statement falls heavy over the room, and it’s a testament to it’s truth that Jack doesn’t argue it.

“I’ll check in on him more,” Luke says. “Make sure he texts me every night. We’ll spend more time together on weekends.” It’s not like he’ll be spending that time with anyone else.

“How do you know it’ll work?” Ben asks.

“I don’t, but Jack’s right. We can’t all drop our whole lives over this. It’ll work or it won’t work, but we’ll try and we’ll figure something else out if we need to.”

“When did you get smart?” Jack says.

“He’s always been smart,” Ben finally cracks a small smile. “You just don’t usually listen to him.”

Luke gets his sociology exam deferred, but he just figures he’ll take the fail in Fiction-Writing. It’s clearly not for him, and he’s fine with that. He thought long and hard about it over his Christmas Break, and now that he’s back at school, he’s decided that he’s happy to be done with it.

He’s ready to see the F when his final grade come back, but instead, he finds an “INC.”

He looks it up and learns it means “incomplete,” and Michael tells him to go see the professor, so he does.

He digs through his desk for his syllabus and finds Professor Piper’s office. He’s shaky and nervous as he knocks.

“Luke,” she says as she opens the door. “Hello, come in.”

He leaves the door open behind him and she gestures for him to hit at the chair next to her desk. He’s never been in a professor’s office before, and it’s nothing like he expected. It’s cramped, but large windows let in enough light to make it feel open. He hesitates at the chair – he doesn’t want to stay long, but he sits when she does, at her desk.

“You never turned in your final assignment,” she says. “You’d done so much good work over the semester, I was looking forward to reading what you could do with the word count to stretch out, a little. What happened?”

Luke takes a shaky breath. “Uh, my brother was in the hospital, so. Anyways, I had already decided not to do it.”

“Why not?”

“I realized that I didn’t want to,” Luke says honestly, surprising himself. “I don’t like fiction writing. It’s not for me.”

“Luke, everything you turned in was of an extremely high quality, this was reflected in my comments.”

Luke knows this, but he feels like he’s being told off by his mum. “Not all of it.”

“You made one uninformed mistake. That doesn’t negate your talent.”

Luke shakes his head. “That’s what I want to do, though. I don’t want to write my own characters. I like fanfiction, that’s what I’m good at.”

“You’re good at original fiction, too.”

“Not at writing it. It doesn’t feel good to write.”

“It’s not supposed to, not if it matters,” she says. Luke refuses to continue to try to convince a professor that he’s not as good as she thinks he is. “I haven’t turned in your final grade. I suppose that’s why you’re here? I’d like you to write the story. I’ll give you the rest of the semester. You were headed towards an A in my class, maybe even an A plus.”

Luke thinks about the potential, horrible F on his transcript, but then he thinks of sitting in front of that blank word document, and how much it had hurt.

“Can I think about it?”

“Yes, take some time. I just want you to know that I wouldn’t do this for everyone. I really do believe you have talent, Luke.”

He thanks her weakly and leaves the office without looking up.

Luke’s first Friday night back, he goes over to Jack’s apartment. Mali opens the door and pulls him right into a hug, which he flounders under.

“I’m so, so sorry for what happened. I should have done something.”

“You didn’t know, none of us knew.”

“He’s my best friend, I should have known.”

“And he’s my brother. It’s alright, we can do better now.”

She nods and ushers him into the apartment. They go into the open concept main area, and Calum, Michael’s Calum, is sitting at the counter on a barstool, eating pasta.

“This is my brother,” Mali says, coming up and throwing an arm around Calum.

“Calum,” Luke says, like an idiot.

“You know each other?” she asks, clearly surprised. Luke shouldn’t be as offended by that as he is.

“He’s friends with Michael,” Luke explains, “My roommate.”

Calum’ drops his eyes quick and Mali widens hers. “So you know Michael?”

“Um, yeah?”

“I have so many questions, oh my god, so many questions—”

Jack walks into the room then and Luke is relieved to see that he’s sober, even though it’s just past dinner time and he hasn’t had a chance to sneak off anywhere, anyways.

“Leave the boy alone, Mali,” Jack walks over to the stove and holds up a pot. “Spaghetti?” he asks Luke, who shakes his head.

“I ate with Michael,” Luke says out of habit, because it’s true, and Calum flushes a bit.

“Well, anyways—” Jack starts before Mali has the chance to say anything. “We’re playing _Scrabble_ , sorry, it’s already decided. We might do some Mario Kart when Levi gets in from work.”

Luke nods and follows Jack to the living area, where the game box is already on the coffee table. He goes about setting it up and Jack sits on the couch.

“Mali’s really pissed at me,” Jack says, voice low. “She’s been on my back all week, and those were _weekdays_ , so that should make you feel better. I wouldn’t be able to go out even if I wanted to.”

Luke narrows his eyes a bit at the last part, but it does make him feel better. He’s happy to know that Jack has someone looking out for him that actually sees him everyday.

The game night is fun, and once they get into it a bit, Luke finds that he likes Calum a lot. He’s funny in a sharp way, and Luke understands why he and Michael get along. Calum offers to drive Luke home after, and he accepts, because it’s cold and he doesn’t feel like walking.

“So,” Calum says tentatively when they’re in his car on the way to campus – it’s an old Honda Civic that was once Mali’s, but became Calum’s because the apartment only had one parking space. “You’re Jack’s brother.”

Luke nods. “And you’re Mali’s brother. And Michael’s—” Luke trails off, because he’s not sure what Michael and Calum are.

Calum flushes. “I know that this makes me sound super pathetic and desperate and juvenile, but what has Michael told you about me?”

“Me and Michael really don’t talk about that kind of thing, so all I know is that he always looks his best when he’s going to meet you.”

Calum smiles at that, small and private. Luke looks at the road. “He says that you’re equally as socially inept as me.”

“I’m very socially inept, it’s a high bar.”

Calum laughs even though it’s not very funny. “You’re underestimating me. Don’t be fooled by the jock façade.”

“Well, look at us now. We can’t be that bad, right? We’ve only had like three awkward silences so far this car ride.”

Calum laughs again. “Hey, why is this the first time I’ve seen you at Mali’s? I’m there like, all the time.”

“Oh, me and Jack, we were fighting most of last semester.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, we’ve figured it out, I think.”

They come up on Luke’s building and Calum pulls up right to the door. “Thanks for the ride,” Luke says as he crawls out of the car.

“Tell Michael I said hi,” Calum smiles, a bit mischievously, and then Luke’s closing the door and he’s gone.

Michael is in their room when he gets up, banging frustratedly at his computer. He looks up when Luke comes in, but barely.

“How was brotherly bonding?”

“Good, you’ll never guess who was there,” Luke says, and Michael hums in disinterest. “Calum wanted me to tell you he says hi.”

“What?” Michael twists his chair violently.

“Turn’s out he’s Jack’s roommate’s brother.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“I’m not,” Luke says sincerely, and he can tell that Michael believes him. He doesn’t know why, but there’s something in Michael’s face that compels him to say, “He asked me if you ever talk about him.”

“Really?” Michael asks, way too softly, and Luke laughs. “You’re a fucking dickhead!” Michael reaches back for his pillow to throw at Luke.

“Sorry, I’m sorry. He really did ask me that.”

“What did you say?”

“That you always look your best when you’re going out with him.”

Michael stares at Luke a few moments, but seems satisfied with the answer and turns back to his computer.

Luke almost starts to think that Ashton has let whatever they were go. He hasn’t texted Luke since Christmas break, and that was only a couple of times. Michael hasn’t mentioned him, and he’s not been up to their room even though Michael has been spending more time there than usual.

But halfway through the second week of term, just as Luke is getting used to the new schedule, he comes back up to his dorm and Ashton is sitting in front of the door, because of course he is.

Luke steps over his legs to unlock the door, and sees Ashton look up out of the corner of his eye. “Michael’s at work.”

“I know, I came to talk to you.”

“I think we’ve talked enough.”

“I just really need to say something,” Ashton stumbles to his feet. Luke gets the door open but hovers in it. “Can I come in?”

“No,” Luke says. Ashton frowns, but Luke thinks he probably deserves it.

“Fair enough,” Ashton says, even though he looks hurt. “I can tell you here.”

“Fine.”

“I lied, at the hospital. I don’t know why I did. Everything was just coming out wrong and I could hear what I was saying but I didn’t want to be saying it—”

“What did you lie about?”

“The kiss.”

“What about it?”

“I said it was just a kiss. It wasn’t.”

Luke looks at Ashton for a long moment, then opens the door wide to let him in. Ashton wisely does not sit on Luke’s bed, but takes Michael’s desk chair instead.

“Why did you kiss that girl, then?” Luke asks as he settles onto his bed. He sits upright, feet on the ground.

“I don’t really want to talk about that.”

“If you want to keep having a conversation, you’re talking about that.”

Ashton sighs. “I don’t have a good explanation for you.”

“Try.”

“It meant nothing. I don’t know why I did it,” Ashton says, but Luke just keeps looking at him expectantly. “I thought you were rejecting me, when you didn’t answer my text. I thought it might help me get over you.”

“Did it?”

“If it did, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

Luke nods. “It wasn’t – it wasn’t just a kiss for me, either. Not at all. I hadn’t – I hadn’t done that before.”

“Kissed a guy?”

“Kissed anyone,” Luke admits to his feet. “Not like that.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Ashton sounds appropriately guilty, and Luke decides immediately to forgive him.

“I really liked you. I still really like you. And I’m really scared, because you’re – you’re older and cooler and experienced and—”

“Luke.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay, I just – I really like you too,” Ashton says, and Luke finally looks up. “And it’s okay to be scared, we can take this as slow as you want to, if this is something you want to try.”

“ _This_ meaning what, exactly?”

“Dating me, if that’s okay with you. Or just spending time together again, but knowing we both really like each other.”

“Well, that just sounds like dating,” Luke says, and Ashton turns his head to hide his grin.

“So, Luke? Will you go on a date with me?”

“Okay,” Luke says, and Ashton doesn’t hide his smile this time.

When Luke wakes up the next morning, Michael is staring at him.

“Jesus Christ,” Luke mumbles.

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

“Why are you so fucking creepy?”

“We need to figure some shit out before this gets any further,” Michael says.

“What are you even talking about? What time is it?”

“I talked to Ashton last night,” Michael says, and then Luke’s awake. He sits and rubs his hand over his eyes. “He says you’re going on a date with him.”

“Yeah,” Luke mumbles.

“So you’ve made up?”

“Can you really call it making up if we were never together?”

“Did you sleep with him?”

“I feel like we’re not having the same conversation, right now,” Luke says, and Michael sighs.

“Sorry, this is weird. I’m being weird.”

“You’re always weird,” Luke says fondly, and Michael glares.

“No, don’t do that. We’re not that kind of friends,” he says. “Okay, we need some rules. Because he’s my best friend, but I like you and want to keep you around, and I want to not be weird.”

“I can do rules.”

“Okay, first rule, don’t talk to me about your sex life, ever.”

“Wasn’t planning on it, anyways,” Luke says, and Michael ignores him.

“Second rule, don’t be cute in front of me. I don’t do well with cute from anyone, I’m not going to do well with cute from you.”

“We’re not cute. There is no _cute_ to _be_.”

“Third rule, Ashton is my best friend,” Michael pauses, and Luke knows that this is the one that matters. “He’s always been my best friend. There’s a lot between us. You can’t be jealous of that, you can’t be jealous of me and him.”

“I don’t know if I can promise you that I won’t feel things.”

“You have to, because we’ll never get past it otherwise. It goes both ways, anyways. I can’t be jealous of what you two have.”

Luke knows that this is a big thing for Michael to say, just by his tone. He doesn’t know if he truly believes that this will work, that they can just promise away everything that sits heavy between them, but Luke will try. He cares about Michael so much so suddenly that he will do everything in his power to keep the promise he’s about to make.

“Okay, no being jealous,” Luke says.

“No being jealous,” Michael agrees. He stands and steps into his shoes. “I’m hungry, want to go get breakfast?”

Luke looks at the clock – it’s 6 in the morning. “No, I want to go back to bed. Why are you even up so early?”

“Never went to bed,” Michael says.

“Were you with Calum?”

“New rule, no asking me about Calum.”

“Why not? I like Calum. You should bring him around more.”

“I don’t know what we are, yet. No asking me about Calum until I know what we are.”

“What do you want to be?”

“You’re breaking rule number four,” Michael says.

“I think he really likes you. I think he’d be whatever you want to be.”

Michael pauses. “We don’t talk about this. We aren’t this kind of friends.”

“We can be, though,” Luke says, and Michael nods, but leaves for breakfast, and Luke falls back to sleep.

So far, dating Ashton is remarkably similar to being friends with Ashton. They go out more, but the interactions haven’t changed. Talking to Ashton still feels like it always has.

Dating Ashton has only made Luke realize how much he already knew about him. Luke had never been on a date, but he’s heard about a lot of first dates from Ben and Jack, and he knows the kind of small talk they’re supposed to engage in, but they don’t, because Luke already knows about Ashton’s family and Ashton’s studies and Ashton’s hometown.

Ashton has taken back up his constant presence in Luke’s room. Maybe it’s Michael’s rules, or maybe it’s so familiar, but it’s really not weird at all.

As February comes to an end, Luke is doing well. He’s impressed with himself for having what counts as a social life, especially with Friday game nights with Jack, Mali, Calum, and sometimes Levi. The only problem is that he’s not writing nearly as much as he should be on two levels.

Firstly, _Stars and Souls_ is really suffering. He updates twice a week at most, and the chapters feel like filler, even though everything he puts out matters to the conclusion of his story. _Endgame_ , the title of the fourth _Avengers_ movie finally released, comes out in just over two months and Luke needs to finish first. He needs his chance to tell the story he wants to hear before canon closes the door on all of the possibilities for the characters that Luke loves so much.

Secondly, Luke, inexplicably, had agreed to write his final assignment for Fiction-Writing, and he still hasn’t made any progress. He’s not tried, not really. He keeps waiting for inspiration, or even motivation. He just doesn’t have a story to tell, and he’s learned in his years writing fanfiction that he can’t work like that.

His professor has sent him a few emails to check in, which Luke handles exceptionally poorly, telling her at first that he’s swamped with other schoolwork and then when pressed, says that he’s working on a story about best friends. He doesn’t know why he says it, he’s never had a best friend, he has no idea what it’s like to have a best friend, and now he’s locked in. His story had room to appear before, now he’s going to have to mould something around a throwaway line in an email.

Luke tells Ashton about it, complaining that he has extra work to do, and Ashton is annoying about it in that he’s extremely supportive.

“It’s amazing to get a second chance like that,” Ashton says. “Most professors would never give one.”

“But I didn’t _want_ one,” Luke whines. “I’m not going to be able to do it, and now I’ll just have disappointed her twice instead of once.”

“You write all the time, Luke. You’re so good. You can do it.”

“That’s different. I write about Bucky and Steve. I can’t write from nothing.”

“Then don’t write from nothing, write about something from your own experiences.”

“That’s easy for you to say, you have experiences. My experiences are limited to writing fanfiction and fighting with my brothers.”

“So write about that.”

“I can’t write a story about writing fanfiction, Ash.”

“Write about fighting with your brothers, then.”

Luke groans. “I can’t, they’re all stupid and I don’t even remember most of them.”

“Maybe that’s a story itself!”

Luke just groans and drops his head onto Ashton’s shoulder. They’re both on his bed – Ashton has slowly been migrating closer and closer to Luke when they’re alone. They touch casually now, sometimes, and it makes Luke’s heart race. This is why he can’t write about his own experiences – he’s eighteen years old and touching his head to someone’s shoulder gives him chills.

Luke thinks about how this was exactly where they’d had their first and only kiss. It would be so easy to kiss Ashton again – he’s right here, and he’s smiling and everything is easy—

But the door slams opens, and Michael glances over them quickly. “Rule number two,” he says as he falls into his desk chair and starts up his computer.

Ashton laughs as Luke shuffles away.

When Luke gets back from game night, the second Friday in March, Ashton and Michael are there, both studying.

“When did you get so boring? I don’t think you spent a single Friday night here last semester,” Luke asks Michael.

“Where would he go? Calum’s with you at game night,” Ashton says, and Michael groans.

“Rule number four.”

“Fine, sorry,” Ashton says, but he grins at Luke. “How was game night?”

“Good, Calum won,” he says, even though Calum didn’t win, just to see Ashton cackle as Michael slams his head to the desk.

“Rule number four!”

That week, when Ashton and Luke are on their Wednesday coffee date, Ashton tells Luke that he’ll be out of town over the weekend for his younger sister’s birthday.

Because Luke’s an idiot, he says, “Oh, that’s perfect.”

“If you’re tired of me, you could just say so,” Ashton says, but he’s smiling.

“You know I didn’t mean it like that,” he kicks Ashton under the table and doesn’t pull his leg away when it falls resting on Ashton’s. Luke is getting better at the casual physical contact – he still goes warm, but his heart doesn’t race like he’s a character in a bad Victorian romance novel. “I have so much writing to do, and if you’re gone, I can lock myself in a room and get a few chapters ahead in _Stars and Souls_ —”

“Well I had hoped you might text me once or twice,” Ashton jokes.

“Of course I’ll text you, I’d go through withdrawal, or something. Have you noticed we’re kind of always together?” Luke is joking but Ashton smiles softly, like this was a grand romantic confession. “What?”

“Nothing,” Ashton turns his hand where it’s resting on the table so his palm is facing up, always leaving Luke to make the final step. Without thinking much about it, Luke reaches his hand out to link his fingers with Ashtons. “Is it lame to say that I’ll miss you?”

“Very lame. Cheesy. I’d never write that in a fanfic,” Luke says, but he has written that in a fanfic. Ashton’s widening grin tells Luke that Ashton knows this, too.

“Damn, I better find this fanfic of yours. I bet it’ll full of good lines.”

“It is, but they’d never work on me. I wrote them, I’m immune.”

“But you write so much, you’ve probably used every good line there is.”

“True, that’s why I’m immune to all of the lines.”

They finish their coffees and walk together until they need to split off for class. Luke thinks about kissing Ashton again, because it doesn’t feel hard, anymore. It doesn’t feel scary or big, it feels okay. It feels like it makes sense, and it feels like he wants to, and he knows that Ashton will let him.

The moment passes though, and Luke goes to class thinking about all the kissing scenes he’s ever written and how none of them account for the wonder of the build up.

When he gets back to his room, he finds out that Michael has a big assignment due, the kind of assignment he describes as “make or break,” so he plans to be in their room all weekend, working. Luke has gotten much better at writing with Michael around, but he wants a different kind of mood for his writing marathon, so he calls Jack.

“Can I stay over at yours for the weekend?”

“Why do you want to stay at mine?”

“I need to write, like, a lot, and Michael is working on something so he’s all tense and I’m not going to like what I write. I need better vibes.”

“You know the word _vibes_?”

“Plus,” Luke continues, ignoring Jack, “Ashton is out of town, so I won’t even have him to lighten the mood.”

“Speaking of, we need to talk about that.”

“What?”

“Ashton.”

“Oh, what about him?”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

Luke stops to think for a moment, even though he knows that Jack will take the silence as an admission. He knows that this conversation is way overdue, that he keeps mentioning Ashton and their dates and that he needs to explain, but he’s not sure how. Because Ashton isn’t his boyfriend, but Luke knows by now that he could be, if Luke would just ask, and he’s starting to understand how much he really wants to ask.

“Almost,” Luke finally says.

“What does that mean?”

“It means almost. So? Can I come stay?”

“Fine, but you’re not sharing my bed,” Jack says, but Luke knows it’s an empty threat, because they’ve shared countless beds in countless relatives’ houses and hotels over road trips.

“I’ll come early on Friday to bake cinnamon buns,” Luke says, and he knows he’s gotten his way.

They play a half-hearted round of Mario Kart for game night, because Calum isn’t there and it feels weird without him. Mali and Jack decide to go out and she promises Luke that she’ll take care of him, and he trusts her, but even more so, he trusts Jack, again.

Their other roommate is out of town for the weekend too, visiting his girlfriend in the city, so Luke sets up at the kitchen counter on a barstool and writes the entire night.

He gets so much done over the weekend that he posts two chapters, even though he had been planning to save them and spread them out over the week. He has six and a half chapters ready on top of those two when he comes back to school Sunday night, and now that he’s hit a stride, he thinks he’ll be able to keep up a couple thousand words a night.

Michael is sleeping when Luke lets himself in, even though its still early evening. He’s sprawled out over the covers and he’s still wearing his glasses, like he didn’t intend to stay asleep long. Luke leaves him to sleep but he does take off his glasses for him, gently, so that he doesn’t startle Michael into smacking him.

Luke studies biology a bit, trying to get his science credit out of the way early. It’s not sticking though, and the test is still a week away, so he reaches for his phone in relief when it lights up with a text.

It’s Ashton, which isn’t a surprise, because he mostly only ever texts Ashton. He’s asking Luke to call him, so he steps out into the hall, closing the door as softly as he can behind him.

“Hey, Ash,” Luke says when Ashton answers. He can hear the smile in his own voice.

“Hey, can I stop by? I’ve missed you.”

“Lame line,” Luke says, Ashton laughs.

“I know. Can I come anyways?”

“Michael’s asleep,” Luke says, a bit regretful. “I think he’s been working on his assignment all weekend. He still had his glasses on when I got back.”

“Oh, he hates sleeping with his glasses on, he says it hurts his ears in the morning.”

“It’s okay, I took them off.”

“Oh,” Ashton says, far too fondly considering the circumstances. “Good, you’re a good friend, Luke.”

Luke clears his throat, more embarrassed by this compliment than any that Ashton has given him, and he’s given him several, over the months they’ve been dating. “Um, I think we should let him sleep, probably.”

“Yeah, you’re right. You could come see me?”

“Where would we go?”

“We could sit in the truck? I just want to see you.”

“It’s too cold to sit in your truck.”

“We could go to my house?” Ashton asks, and Luke pauses. This is one of the big moments, this is one of those times that Ashton is handing their future to Luke and asking what he wants it to look like. It should feel scary, it should be overwhelming, but it’s not.

“Okay,” Luke says, like there’s nothing hanging over the house, no bad memories or implication, like it’s easy.

“Okay,” Ashton’s grin is strong in his voice, and Luke can’t help but smile too.

“Let me know when you’re here,” Luke says.

“Oh, I am here. I’ve been outside this whole time.”

Luke shakes his head but can’t keep his big, stupid smile off his face. “Give me ten minutes?”

“I’ll be here.”

Luke hangs up and slips back into his room. He changes as quietly as he can, but he doesn’t think a bulldozer would wake Michael right now. He brushes his teeth and stares at himself in the mirror for a long moment. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, he looks the exact same he always has.

Only he doesn’t – not really. His trademark look in high school was constant dark circles under his eyes from writing all night, and they’ve nearly gone, even though he’s been writing all weekend. His hair is longer, and curlier. He likes it this way, and he knows that Ashton likes it too because his fingers always push through it when Ashton thinks it’s a natural moment for it. He has a bit of stubble, but it doesn’t look weird and patchy, it looks intentional.

When Luke gets down to Ashton’s truck, just under ten minutes later, he’s so sure of everything. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt this right in his life.

Ashton guides him into the house with his hand on Luke’s back. They walk through the living room to the stairs, with Ashton calling out a “hello” to his roommates, but nothing else.

They run into one of them on their way up the stairs, though. “Luke, this is Alex,” Ashton introduces. Alex does a weird bro-handshake but he doesn’t seem to feel awkward about it.

“Is Luke a boyfriend?”

Ashton looks at Luke. “If he wants to be,” he says.

“I do,” Luke says, only to Ashton. Luke thinks he might fall over at the force of the smile that breaks onto Ashton’s face.

Alex disappears down the stairs and Ashton keeps leading Luke up. The staircase couldn’t have been part of the original house, the landings were weird and hallways appeared in illogical places. Ashton points out the bathrooms and eventually the staircase gets too narrow to walk side by side, so Luke follows Ashton up to the end of the stairs, where a single doorway sits.

“If I’d known you live at the top of a multidimensional maze, I would have come up to your room a lot sooner,” Luke says.

Ashton laughs and opens the door. The room is small, just enough space for a bed and a dresser, really. It’s a nice bed though, it’s big and filled with pillows and blankets like a nest. “It was the servant’s quarters. I was the only one willing to deal with all the stairs.”

“Is that how you keep up your physique, then?” Luke brushes a finger down Ashton’s bicep, to punctuate the joke, but it feels intimate and loaded in the new space. He doesn’t abort the motion, though, and he doesn’t regret it.

Ashton watches Luke’s face for any sign of panic, probably, but doesn’t find anything. “No, the drumming mostly does the trick.”

“You’re a drummer? Really?” Luke asks. He kicks off his shoes and climbs onto Ashton’s bed. “I can’t believe you never told me.

“I thought I had,” Ashton says. He takes off his shoes too and joins Luke on the bed. They’re sitting, facing each other, but not touching.

“No, but you should have. Drummers are hot.”

“Shut up, Luke.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I,” Ashton says, and he is, so Luke falls silent. “On the stairs, what you said—”

“I meant it. I want to be your boyfriend, if you want that too.”

“I do.”

“Good,” Luke says. He’s leaned forward slightly, and he watches Ashton’s eyes.

“Can I say something lame?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been thinking about kissing you since the day we met.”

“That’s not lame,” Luke says.

“It’s cheesy, you’ve probably written it a hundred times.”

“Yeah, but only because it’s a good line.”

“You said that you’re immune to those lines,” Ashton says.

“I am, but I’m not immune to you,” Luke’s the one who closes the gap, finally. They kiss, and Luke realizes that no words he ever writes could describe the moment. Here, in real life, with Ashton, Luke knows that this is something that words can’t touch.

It’s strange, because nothing really changes.

Luke and Ashton were already seeing each other most days, just now, they make out, too. They still aren’t physically affectionate around Michael, because they respect all of the rules but the fourth.

They’re all studying in Luke and Michael’s room – exams are coming up on them quickly. Luke is on his bed, Ashton is on Michael’s, and Michael is in his desk chair.

When Michael pulls his glasses off and rubs his eyes, Luke makes eye contact with Ashton, and pounces.

“So, you guys should come to game night on Friday.”

Michael looks up at Luke, eyes wide, then to Ashton. “Rule number four!”

“Sounds fun,” Ashton says. “I could use a break, and it’ll be nice to meet Jack and—”

“Rule number four!” Michael cries.

“It’s just a game night,” Luke says. “Jack wants to meet you guys.”

“The whole night would be a violation of rule number four.”

“We won’t talk about it,” Ashton says. “We just want to spend time with you.”

Michael glares at him, but eventually shakes his head and turns back to his computer. “Fine, I’ll be there.”

Luke smiles at Ashton triumphantly, and when _Endgame_ tickets go on sale the next morning, he buys six. He hasn’t asked yet, but he knows that none of his people will say no.

Luke, Ashton and Michael are the last to arrive to game night. Levi is gone again, so as soon as everyone is sitting around the coffee table in the living area, Luke brings it up.

“I got us all tickets to see _Endgame_ ,” he says. “Opening night. The 25th, at 10:45pm. It’s okay if you can’t come, I just figured—”

They all chime in with promises to be there, even Michael, who Luke is pretty sure has never seen a _Marvel_ movie in his life.

They break off into conversation – Michael and Calum are sitting together on the couch, talking to Mali on the armchair about the sequence of movies. Ashton is on the other end of the couch, talking to Jack, who’s on the floor next to Luke, about sports.

Maybe it’s weird that Luke has grown so attached to these people so quickly, even though he barely knows some of them, and maybe it’s awkward because it’s the first time a lot of them are meeting, but if it is, Luke doesn’t feel it. He’s just really happy to have all of his favourite people together.

They eventually manage to pull the conversation back together long enough to decide on a game. They play _Cards Against Humanity_ , because it’s easy with so many people. A few turns in, Luke notices that Mali is smiling, watching Calum laugh into Michael’s shoulder. Luke follows her gaze and Michael goes a bit red.

“Rule number four,” he mouths, but he doesn’t seem to mean it.

Calum settles into Luke’s life, after that. Michael brings him around a lot more often, and stops calling “rule number four,” when they’re not asking specifically about the relationship.

Calum is studying on Michael’s bed because Ashton is working. Michael has his headphones blasting something loud and scream-y while he works. Luke is writing _Stars and Souls_ – he’s so close to the end he can feel it. Each chapter gets more and more tense, and everything he writes is important. There’s no more room for fluff or filler or pining, he’s only got weeks now until the movie is out and everyone has their answers.

Despite his need to study, Luke is on a good streak. He’s getting out at least four thousand words a night, and the hits have never been higher. He can’t even open his ask box on Tumblr anymore, he’s so overwhelmed with the messages. He feels like everyone who’s ever even considered shipping Stucky is reading his fic, and the pressure doesn’t sit on him like he thought it would. He feels good, he feels like he’s going to do this.

He looks up to stretch his neck as he finishes writing an intense exchange between Steve and Tony – it’s so charged, so rich with all of their history. He needs to get it right, because Steve and Tony are everything in this fic, Steve’s love for him second only to his love for Bucky.

Calum is looking at him, seems like he may have been watching for a while. “What are you working on?” Calum asks.

“My fic,” Luke says, and then remembers that Calum might not know about it. “My fanfic. I write _Avengers_ fanfic.”

“Oh, that’s awesome! I’ve read a bunch of _Avengers_ fanfic. Would I have seen yours?”

“Maybe,” Luke says, even though he knows that if Calum is reading any slash fic, the answer is yes. “I’ve been working on this one since _Infinity War_ came out, it’s called _Stars and Souls_?”

“That’s you?” Calum asks, voice raising. “I’ve been reading your fics for years, literally years.”

“Small world,” Luke says, and Calum shakes his head.

“You’re the biggest Stucky writer out there, that’s not small world, you’re just amazing.”

“I don’t know about that,” Luke says.

Calum just shakes his head. “I have a group chat with online friends where we just freak out about it like, half the time. This is insane. I can’t wait to tell Mali.”

“She reads it?”

“Of course she reads it, she’s the one who got me into it.”

“Fuck,” Luke says.

Michael takes his headphones off and sighs heavily. “I need to eat, let’s go down to the dining hall.”

“Did you know about this?” Calum asks, waving a hand at Luke.

“Know about what?”

“Luke writing the biggest _Avengers_ fanfic out right now?”

Michael raises his eyebrows a bit. “I knew that he wrote _Avengers_ fanfic—”

“You people are insane,” Calum says. “Let’s go, I’m hungry.”

Luke follows and answers Calum’s questions as well as he can while Michael watches, amused. Once they’re sitting and eating, Michael stops Calum with a hand to his forearm.

“Babe, you’re coming across a bit starstruck, you know that, right?”

“Fuck off, I’m just excited,” Calum says, and shoves a bite of food into his mouth.

Luke grins at Michael and mouths “babe?”

Michael scowls and holds out four fingers with his free hand.

Ashton’s in his room to study, and Michael and Calum aren’t there so they’re both sitting on Luke’s bed.

They’re shoulder to shoulder, and Luke worries that he’s jostling Ashton too much while typing, but he’s in the good part of writing, the part where the words come before he has to think of them, like they’ve been there forever, just waiting for their moment. He’s barely reading back as he goes, Steve and Natasha are talking and he doesn’t even know what they’re saying. He’s pretty sure neither of them have moved in three pages. He’s going to have to go back and edit, but it’s worth it.

He gets another three pages of dialogue written and then he reaches a natural scene break, so he lifts his hands to stretch out his wrists. Ashton grabs the hand closer to him and brings it up to his lips.

“How’s the writing coming?”

“Good, it feels good.”

“Is it your fiction-writing assignment?”

“Oh, uh, no. I don’t think I’m going to do that,” Luke says. He hasn’t really been thinking about it, other than to think about how his professor is all wrong about him.

“Why not?”

“I just don’t think I can,” Luke says, and that’s the only answer he can give.

“What would you say about a break?” Ashton asks, picking up on Luke’s tone.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Would you be open to a surprise?”

Luke smiles. “I’m open to being open to a surprise.”

“Then come on,” Ashton stands without letting go of Luke’s hand, so he saves his document even though he always saves every few lines, and closes his laptop.

They drive out of town, heading south on the freeway. After twenty minutes, Luke realizes that there’s no destination.

“The surprise thing was just a line, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Ashton grins. “But it worked.”

They open the windows a bit, it’s early April and it’s not cold, but it’s not really warm, either. The air feels nice on his face though, and it’s not too loud to talk when they turn onto a gravel road.

“Can I say something lame?” Ashton asks.

“Depends on what it is.”

“I’m in love with you,” he says, just like that, driving around in the middle of nowhere. It’s not a perfect moment, it’s not the kind of confession Luke would ever have thought to write about. It’s normal, and easy, and personal, and it’s anything but lame.

“Pull over,” Luke says, and Ashton does. Comes to a stop to the side of the road, even though it’s completely empty. Once the car is in park, Luke undoes his seatbelt and slides over to Ashton, hands on his face. “I’m in love with you, too.”

When they kiss, it feels like a promise, and Luke doesn’t have any other words that can do it justice.

Luke doesn’t go back to the dorms that night, and when he turns up in the morning, Michael just says, “let’s go get breakfast,” and that’s that.

They watch people go by as they eat, surveying the targets of their mockery for the past 6 months. “I think I’m actually going to miss some of our weirdos,” Michael says.

“I know, I’ve grown so attached. When did we get sentimental?”

“I’m abolishing rule number four,” Michael says, which is an answer itself, so Luke doesn’t press.

“I wonder where they’ll all be next year?” Luke says, because there aren’t all that many sophomores in the dorms. 

“They’re too grown up now, anyways. We need a new crop to judge.” Michael lets the words hang between them for a moment, then clears his throat. “We need to get in our housing forms pretty soon if we want the same room next year.”

“You’re right,” Luke hides his grin in a bite of cereal. “I’ll remind you about it after dinner.”

Luke’s exams are all early in the period, which he is massively thankful for. He spends full days writing against a ticking clock, desperately trying to get the words out before the 25th. He does, but barely. He posts the final chapter of _Stars and Souls_ two days before the premiere of _Endgame_ , and it feels like a sigh of relief.

He reads through comment after comment and message after message. He replies to some, but he can’t reply to all of them. Calum live texts Luke his reaction, and that more than anything else makes Luke emotional.

He wears his Captain America shirt to the theater. Mali and Calum are the only ones as excited as he is, so he clutches Calum’s hand on one side and Ashton’s on the other throughout the whole movie. He cries when Clint’s family vanishes. He gasps when the “five years later” text appears on the screen, even though he had kind of figured there would be a time jump. He cheers when the _Avengers_ go back to 2012. He chokes on air when Natasha falls. He shrieks when Mjolnir comes to Steve, and he openly sobs when he hears “on your left,” and again when Peter, Pepper and Happy watch Tony Stark die.

He looks over at Calum during the credits, right before Mark Ruffalo’s name comes up. He’s crying just as much as Luke is, and he has Michael’s arm around him, and Luke tries to burn it all into his memory, every part of this movie, how he felt during the big moments. He’s never going to be able to unknow any of it.

He looks at Ashton once the Iron Man mask fades to black. Ashton is smiling wide and squeezes his hand. Jack is on the other side of him, leaning forward to grin at Luke, and Mali is wiping her eyes behind him. These movies have been Luke’s life for over seven years, but surrounded by these people, Luke thinks he might be ready for them to be done, after all.

“Luke.”

Luke shifts in Ashton’s bed, reaching out and frowning when he finds it empty. He pries his eyes open and Ashton is standing over him.

“I have to leave for work, soon. You have to get up now if you want me to take you home.”

Luke groans.

“Can I stay?”

“You’ll be stuck all day.”

“I have my laptop, I was just going to watch the old _Avengers_ movies anyways.”

“Okay, help yourself to any food in the kitchen,” Ashton says. He leans forward to press a kiss into Luke’s hairline. “I love you. I’ll be back before dinner, okay?”

“Okay, I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“You said that already,” Luke says, and Ashton laughs.

“Good, you deserve all of the _I love you’s_.”

“Go to work,” Luke says. He plans to fall back to sleep, but he can’t. He goes to brush his teeth and when he comes back, he pulls his laptop onto his legs and opens a Word document.

There’s nothing left between him and this fiction-writing assignment. _Stars and Souls_ is done, his exams are over, Ashton is at work and Michael won’t bother him here. He has three days, and he hadn’t even known he’d been paying attention. Up until this moment, he’d thought that he’d decided not to do it once more.

Ten thousand words. Luke can do ten thousand words. He’s written more than ten thousand words for _Stars and Souls_ in one night, before.

He reminds himself that they don’t have to be good words. He just has to write, eventually something will come out. It won’t be good, but it’ll be done.

He starts to write about a boy who’s alone. It’s Steve, and he knows it’s Steve, but he pushes through because maybe if he gets Steve out, someone else will appear.

It’s a Steve before Bucky, which doesn’t exist in his fics, usually. And it’s a Steve without health problems but also a Steve without the serum, which also doesn’t usually exist in his fics.

This unusual Steve isn’t out of time, either. He’s just alone. He’s alone and he doesn’t know that he is, but he is.

And this Steve is looking for Bucky, only he doesn’t know it. And he’s not just looking for Bucky, he’s looking for Tony and Natasha and Clint and Bruce. Steve draws and he thinks it’ll bring them to him, only he’s not drawing, he’s writing.

Sometimes when Luke writes, and it feels good, the words come out before he has the chance to think about them. He writes like the story has always been there, just waiting for it’s moment.

The words leave Luke, and Luke just watches as they go and they go and they go. It takes him four thousand words to realize that he hasn’t been writing Steve’s name, or Bucky’s, or Tony’s.

It takes him even longer to realize that he was never writing about Steve at all. 


End file.
